As the year draws to a close, we enter into a familiar series of sharp contrasts. Along with the calm and quiet of winter comes the frenzy of December’s last-minute preparations: there are decorations to be hung, parties to be planned, and trips to be made—or travelers to welcome. Christmas always has this dual aspect: no other spiritual feast brings such a [...]
From the editor’s desk: In October, Compact published a provocative essay by Helen Andrews titled “The Great Feminization” in which she argued that cancel culture is essentially feminine: “Cancel culture is simply what women do whenever there are enough of them in a given organization or field.” The thesis is not Andrews’. She borrowed it from the pseudonymous J. Stone and an essay [...]
Josie Luetke: The sympathetic protagonist trotted out by pro-choicers is the teenager who accidentally gets knocked up. Think Ellen Page in Juno or Shailene Woodley in The Secret Life of the American Teenager (disregarding the bit of trivia that both their characters gave birth). Yet, this stereotype hasn’t reflected reality for a while. According to Statistics Canada, in 1975, girls under 20 [...]
Donald DeMarco: I had a terrible dream last night. Maybe it was brought about by that extra slice of “everything on it” pizza I consumed before I retired. It was having its revenge. At any rate, the dream was not only terrifying, but it lasted a long time. I hastened to write it down before I forgot the incidents that rose to [...]
Interim Staff On Oct. 6, the British Columbia legislature debated for an hour a motion condemning Association for Reformed Political Action’s (ARPA) “views and policies.” NDP MLA Rohini Arora (Burnaby East) introduced Motion 38, “Views and Policies of Association for Reformed Political Action.” The motion stated, “That this House condemns the intolerant views of the Association for Reformed Political Action (ARPA), including [...]
Oswald Clark and Paul Tuns On Nov. 4, Liberal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled the the Liberal government’s 2025 federal budget and after two weeks of kabuki theatre of whether or not enough opposition MPs would cross the floor, vote for the budget, or miss the final vote, it passed on a party-line vote 170-168. With a minority caucus that fell just [...]
Richard Dur, Special to The Interim: She said there was “no evidence.” That was the line in a letter from Alberta’s Health Minister, Adriana LaGrange: “Please know that there is no evidence of live-birth abortions occurring in Alberta.” She may even be right, in the narrowest, most technical sense. There is no medical category called a “live-birth abortion.” On paper, what doesn’t [...]
Paul Tuns: Prolife Alberta launched its “Left to Die” campaign demanding protection for babies born alive after botched abortions. The organization hopes to inform Albertans of the Alberta Health Services policy that allows babies born alive after surviving an abortion to die without receiving any care. The campaign was launched in September but gained publicity in late October and early November, forcing [...]
Oswald Clark: The Charlotte Lozier Institute issued its annual report on pregnancy care centres, and it reports that in the United States 2775 pregnancy resource/help centres provided $452 million in medical care, support, educational services, and material goods to mothers and family in 2024. The 2025 report, titled, “Pregnancy Centers: Rising to the Occasion with Unwavering Care,” and produced with Heartbeat International, [...]
Oswald Clark: In November, Planned Parenthood issued an “impact report” detailing the closure of 43 of its abortuaries in 2025, which it blamed on the loss of Title X funds and Medicaid reimbursements after Congress passed, and President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, a ban on federal taxpayer funds being used to pay for abortions. In their report, “The [...]
Oswald Clark and Paul Tuns: On Nov. 4, Liberal Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne tabled the the Liberal government’s 2025 federal budget and after two weeks of kabuki theatre of whether or not enough opposition MPs would cross the floor, vote for the budget, or miss the final vote, it passed on a party-line vote 170-168. With a minority caucus that fell just [...]
"I Humbly Beg Your Speedy Answer”: Letters on Love and Marriage from the World’s First Personal Advice Column Mary Beth Norton (Princeton, $34, 203 pages) In the 1690s, John Dunton published a two-page broadsheet, the Athenian Mercury, a double-sided broadsheet that was “the world’s first advice column,” answering queries from anonymous writers and responded to by the paper’s anonymous Athenian Society of [...]
Paul Tuns, Review: After the Spike: Population, Progress, and the Case for People by Dean Spears and Michael Geruso (Simon & Schuster, $39.99, 307 pages) Concerns about rapidly declining fertility rates are mostly expressed by those on the right-end of the political spectrum. Pro-natalism is unfairly conflated with ideas of Christian nationalist and right-wing populism in political discourse even though the prospect [...]
Paul Tuns, Review Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics by Paul Goren and Christopher Chapp (University of Chicago Press, $42.50 pb, 223 pages) In their book Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics, Paul Goren, director of the Center for the Study of Political Psychology [...]
Canadians divided on abortion, euthanasia, not so much on divorce, contraception Paul Tuns: On Oct. 16, Research Co. released the results of their online poll on what behaviours Canadians find morally acceptable from abortion and euthanasia to marital affairs and gambling. With the exception of pedophilia, there was significant support for most immoral behaviours and majority support for many of them. While [...]